


A Distraction

by SunMoonAndSpoon



Category: Death Note, Death Note: Another Note
Genre: Bullying, Gen, Police Brutality, Racism, Suicide, Trans Character, Transphobia, Violence, fatphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 01:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4544256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunMoonAndSpoon/pseuds/SunMoonAndSpoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A and B meet at Wammy's House and develop what A thinks is a friendship threatening to become a rivalry, and what B thinks is a time-limited rivalry threatening to become a friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Distraction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhiteLadyDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteLadyDragon/gifts).



> Hey everybody! This is another commission for WhiteLadyDragon. She asked for a series of interactions between A & B, leading up to A's death. I tried my best to stick to her interpretations of these characters and their relationship. So, for example, in this story A is a transguy.
> 
> While this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has read Another Note, this story deals with suicide. It also includes transphobic, fatphobic bullying directed at A. Race-based police brutality is also discussed. Please keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to read this story.

 

 

Sleep isn't coming no matter how tightly Allen squeezes his eyes shut. His bed, which is a soft sinking mattress mounted on a wooden frame, is nothing like the hard twin bed that he's used to. These silky olive green sheets are nothing like the scratchy discount store misprinted Superman sheets that he used to sleep on, and he misses how they used to catch on his skin. The room smells wrong, like powder and sky and fresh paint, and each scent is sharp in his nose because it's not like the smell of home. His pajamas are sticking to the sweaty parts of his skin, which means the cloth is like cling wrap.

 

He forgot to ask Roger where the bathroom was during the welcome tour and now it's 3 AM and he has to pee, but he's glued to his bed by the possibility of passing someone in the hall. Also, while he has explicit permission to use the men's room should he choose, he doesn't know how that's going to pan out with the boys he met at yesterday's orientation. Probably, they think he's a girl. Binding is difficult with large breasts, so he doesn't always do it. Short hair and masculine clothing don't help as much as they should, and the fact that he couldn't bring himself to actually introduce himself as a boy (true but dangerous) or a girl (safe, but a lie) doesn't help either.

 

Besides that, he won't be able to use the urinal, and if anybody hears him peeing, they might want to know why he's in a stall sitting down. Why, when they're all supposed to be so brilliant and special, do they not have their own bathrooms?

 

Sighing, he drags himself out of bed, shoves his feet into tattered blue plaid slippers, and pads into the hall. His pulse is pounding so hard it feels like his veins are about to burst open, and when somebody else steps out from the shadows he nearly faints. “H-hello?” he stammers. “Who's there?”

 

“I'm the man who knows when you're going to die.”

 

If Allen's heart could explode with terror it would have. He forces his lips into a twisted smile, folds his fingers into a fist that he knows is formed wrong and that he can't swing into a punch. “Are you planning to kill me?” he asks, voice wobbling.  
  
The shadow-person cackles, then says, “oh...no! No of _course_ not. I'm just kidding. I'm Beyond Birthday. I'm your mortal enemy from now on.” He flashes a smile crowded with bright-white teeth. “You should already have heard of me.”  
  
“I...I did...” mumbles Allen, fingers curled around his arm. The phrase _'mortal enemy'_ makes his stomach ache, but he gets it. Most likely, Beyond sees Allen as an obstacle in the way of becoming L. He doesn't realize yet that he isn't an obstacle, that Allen is days away from expiring from stress and would rather stick his hand in a blender before before actually accepting L's hellish position.

  
He flashes a weak grin. Beyond returns it ten times stronger. “Of course you have. Anyway, it's a pleasure to finally meet you _._ I'm looking forward to our competition. Don't think I'll go easy on you because you're a girl.”

 

“I'm not a girl!” says Allen, regretting the words the instant they leap from his lips. He hadn't decided yet whether he'd tell anyone his real gender, and if he were going to start he should not have started with B. But it's been a long long day of jangled nerves and pure exhaustion, so his words are loose in his mouth. He sighs, buries his face in his hands.  
  
“What do you mean?” asks Beyond, round eyes peeled wide.  
  
Allen's words are muffled with his hands, and he's whispering past a tightness in his throat, but he spits out an answer. “I'm a boy,” he says. “I'm trans, so some people think I'm a girl but they're wrong. Okay? I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

 

“Fine,” says Beyond. “My mistake. You don't have to say anything else about it. I'm still not going to go easy on you. Anyway, what are you doing in the hall so late at night? You know that there's a curfew, right?”  
  
“I was just looking for the bathroom...” he says. “I'm...I'm not sure whether to use the men's room or the women's room.”  
  
“Didn't you say you were a man? Of course you'd use the men's room.” When A protests that he hadn't meant to tell B his real gender, that he doesn't want everybody to know and is thinking of just feigning girlness to avoid harassment, Beyond shrugs “Do whatever you want,” he says. “But it's 3 AM, nobody's out except the two of us. No one will see you. And if anybody does, I'll tear out all of their teeth by hand and make them swallow them. Does that make you feel better?”  
  
All that does is flutter fear through his veins and make his hands shake, but Allen nods anyway, and follows Beyond to the men's room.  
  
~`~`~

 

“We have decided on the first successor for the position of L,”says Watari, standing at an excessively polished podium and staring out at the scramble of orphans piled into auditorium seats. L is standing next to him, staring straight ahead at nothing. Beyond Birthday is trying to absorb his entire essence with his eyeballs, see through to his soul and drink it up like soup, but all he sees is that L looks exhausted and that L will die before he's 30, causes thusfar unknown. Marfan's syndrome, maybe. Beyond knows all about that already, because what the hell kind of future L would he be if he couldn't do something simple like hack into medical records.

 

He knows they're not about to say his name. He knows the successor is that Allen kid he ran into a few weeks back. He solved his case faster than anyone else did, and he's aced all the tests he's had to take. Which, fine, that was the criteria, but Allen's case was obvious. His father was murdered by the police, the police tried to make it look like it was his fault somehow, and everybody bought it because nobody blames the police when they kill black people. Finding evidence takes skill, sure, but the conclusion was clear before he started. The cops are racist. What an amazing and unexpected finding.  
  
Beyond rolls his eyes, rubs the calves that are protesting his L-style perch on the edge of his seat. Allen has been called up to the podium. L ambles over to him, nods at him, and mumbles something Beyond can't hear no matter how hard he strains. He hands him a sheaf of documents, and a chocolate bar. Chocolate, like they're friends now. Beyond sucks in his teeth, clutches his chest and tries to mentally project himself into that space where Allen's standing. Stupid wide-spaced wide teeth grinning up at L, idiot red creeping across his ugly cheeks. Allen, his enemy. Allen, who he will have to befriend.  


Watari is saying something now about how glad they are to finally have a girl prepared to take this position, that he hopes that A will be the first in a long line of diverse L replacements. He doesn't mention the fact that A is black, just that “she” is allegedly a girl. Even though there is no she, A said he was a dude—then said not to tell anyone, so there's that. A squirms and shifts, smiles much too brightly.  
B throws his head back and cackles, thrilled that this honor A barely deserves has been tainted. He'll never be able to remember debuting as L's successor without remembering being misgendered. The laugh bubbles in his throat like a cure from a witch's cauldron, doubles him over and makes him dry heave. The orphans are staring at him with troubled looks on their stupid faces, A is staring from the stage, bewildered, L is cocking his head and trying to absorb his soul and B is just laughing laughing laughing until all he can hear is his own heartbeat.

  
  
  
~`~`~

 

“You should watch Akazukin Chacha with me,” says Beyond, slithering up behind A. “It's a personal vice of mine, but it's quite cute.” A's shoulders are shaking, his eyes are squeezed shut and his lips are trembling. B claps him on the shoulder, hard. “You look like you could use something cute in your life,” he says.

 

When A doesn't reply, B says, “I have my own bathroom! As long as you're hanging with me, you won't have to worry about which one you should use. Does that make you want to come watch anime with me?”

 

“No...after they decided I was A they moved me to a nicer room,” he says. “I have my own bathroom.”

  
He looks toward the end of the hallway, seemingly wanting to leave, so Beyond grabs his hand and says, “will you watch it with me if I say that I'm lonely and I want to be friends with you?”

  
A nods, meekly follows Beyond into his dormitory. What an idiot. Then again, this does give A plenty of opportunity to gather data on him, so maybe he isn't so stupid.

  
A doesn't react to the room with the appropriate awe, but B expected as much. Beyond has done everything he possibly could to remodel the room such that it looks like L's. That meant taking hundreds of photographs of L's room from every possible angle, repainting the walls, sneaking out to buy a matching bedspread, painting over the window and painting a fake one in the spot where L has his window, getting rid of one of his chairs...it was work, and it still isn't perfect, but one day his living space will be identical. At least L's clothes weren't hard to copy, anybody can wear jeans and a white shirt.  
  
A doesn't notice or care, just plops onto B's carefully chosen white blankets. Beyond turns on the TV, perches birdlike on the bed. “Remember what L said about increasing brain power by perching at the end of your seat?” he asks.

 

A's lips curl inward, and he shakes his head. “I tried that,” he says. “All of my brain power was focused on how much it made my thighs hurt. I think it works for L because his spine is so curved—I think he has scoliosis. What works for him doesn't necessarily work for anyone else.”

 

Lack of discipline. No drive to become L. More positively, access to L's medical records, or intimate knowledge of spinal diseases. Because A is absolutely right, L _does_ have scoliosis. He also has Marfan's Syndrome, eczema, a tendency to develop ingrown toenails, and an allergy to walnuts that he refuses to acknowledge because walnuts are often found in cookies and brownies. His blood sugar levels are likely elevated to dizzying heights, though unfortunately B hasn't seen the actual numbers. It's bullshit that he can't. His god-eyes ought to give him every single strand of data that there is about L. Why doesn't he know his white blood cell count? Beyond sighs.

 

“We're never going to be able to surpass L if we can't learn to follow his example,” says Beyond, hissing slightly as he speaks. A's soft, bruised fruit face looks crumpled with mold. Beyond reaches out, strokes his cheek with a curved finger, causing A to flinch. “But right now, we should watch Akazukin Chacha. Okay?” They both watch in silence, except for when Beyond sings the theme song in a grating, off-key tune. After the theme plays for the third time, A sings too. His voice is small and scratchy, and he doesn't seem sure of the words. This irritates Beyond, but he lets it go.  
  
Instead he says, “we are friends now.” Before A can reply, Beyond turns up the volume so loudly that all they can hear is the song. “It's okay,” he whispers, too soft for A to hear him. “You won't have to endure it for long. You'll be dead in a couple of weeks.”  
  
~`~`~

 

 

The food they serve in the Wammy's House cafeteria isn't anything like what Allen is used to.

 

At home, his grandmother did most of the cooking. His mother pitched in from time to time, and he was expected to help. This would have been fine if not for the fact that he was expected to do it as a daughter, as a girl. It was his duty, for the husband he would one day have. Allen enjoyed cooking on multiple levels—he loved time alone with his grandmother, talking about what he'd done that day and listening to her stories, and he loved the process of generating something nourishing and comforting from an incomplete assembly of ingredients. But he didn't like that it was tied to a femininity he didn't possess, and he didn't like how his mother got on his case about eating too much of what he cooked. “You're too fat,” she'd said, jabbing Allen in the stomach as he popped a piece of akarainto his mouth. His grandmother would scold her, they'd bicker, and Allen would eat in silence, hoping his mother would go to bed early so he could spend clean-up alone with his grandmother.   
  
So mealtimes were contentious things that often left a lump in Allen's throat. Still, the food itself had been delicious. His grandmother and mother could both cook beautifully with cheap ingredients, and they'd taught him to do the same. He was used to eating egusi soup, coconut curry and ofada stew. Of course he'd eaten plenty of British food—his family would sometimes visit the local fish and chips place when they didn't feel like cooking, and he had snacks from local stores all the time—but meals at home were Nigerian food with the occasional Jamaican dish, and now he's eating British food every day.

 

Today's meal is Shepherd's pie, which is _fine._ Allen likes meat and he likes potatoes and he likes peas. The seasoning is well-balanced, the meat is tender, it's much tastier than he'd expect from cafeteria food , but none of that changes the fact that it's not Nigerian food and it's not Jamaican food, and He won't be able to get those things again unless he makes them himself or makes the money to go to a restaurant, and right now he can't do those things and his every day is so divorced from what he remembers from home and he...his eyes are welling up. He bats his tears aside, stabs his fork to the food, and casts his eyes toward B, who is sitting across from him at the dinner table.

 

Watching B eat takes Allen's mind off of his own discomfort. Instead of eating food hearkening toward any particular culture, B appears to exist solely on a diet of strawberry jam. He shovels it out of a wide- mouthed jar, not even stopping to spread it on bread. He says, “I try to vary my diet a little so that it's more like L's, but most of what he likes makes me feel sick.”

 

It's common knowledge in the orphanage that L eats mostly cake and ice cream, which is hardly varied. At first Allen thinks that B is joking, but his wide-eyed stare says he's serious indeed.

 

“Out of everybody here, I look the most like L,” says B. “And our minds are exactly alike. But I can't eat like him without feeling ill, and crouching in a chair like he does makes my knees hurt.” He sighs, swipes a glob of seedy jam into his mouth. "I'm pretty sure L uses utensils too..."

 

“I don't think that the point is to be exactly like L,” says Allen, spooning up cereal and not eating it. “Nobody can do that. The point is to be able to do detective work on his level. L wasn't chosen to be L because he eats a lot of cake.”

 

“That's easy for you to say, _A_ ,” B says, rolling his eyes and rolling his title around in his mouth like a poison he wants to spit out. “They're so disgustingly enamored with your talents that you don't have to think about things like this. Some of us aren't so lucky. The only way to surpass you is to become L." a flash of white teeth, a hyena cackle. “In every way possible.”

 

“That's not...come on B, you know that can't be done. You can't become another person, especially not someone who keeps so many parts of himself secret.”

 

B plants his palms on the table, shoots up and leans over the table, knocking over Allen's orange juice and grinding his forehead into his cheek. “What,” he rasps. “Do you think that you're the only great detective here? You think I'm not smart enough to figure out L's secrets?”

 

Allen shakes his head, grips the seat of his wooden chair and scoots it backward. The whole cafeteria is staring at them, which only makes Allen's heart pound harder. “N-no, B, I'm sure you're a very talented detective, I just, umm....” Sweat pours down the back of his neck. “Figuring it out doesn't mean that you can copy it, though.” It looks as if B's eyeballs are twitching in his skull, and while they probably aren't, his fingers are definitely twitching toward Allen's neck. He gulps, squeezes his eyes shut and prays that time will rewind itself to the point before he disagreed with B. “I, I mean, you can do whatever you want.”

 

B reels back, sits down and plunges his hand into his jar of jam. “Exactly,” he says, smearing it across his lips. “You really ought to be working harder to be more like him. Honestly, if you can transform yourself from a girl to a boy, it shouldn't be too hard to put on jeans and hunch your back a little.”  


“Those are different things...” says Allen, picking up his juice glass and trying to mop up the mess with his napkin. “I didn't transform myself, I just stopped pretending to be a girl. To be like L, I'd have to _start_ pretending.”   
  
B's eyes widen, and his lip curl inward. “It's not pretending. L is a job, not a person. You know that saying 'dress for the job you want, not the job you have?' Well, I sure as hell don't want to stay B forever. The fact that you're A is making you too confident. I'm giving you career advice, but sooner or later I'm going to surpass you.”

 

Allen shakes his head but says nothing.

  
~`~`~

 

 

“Ewww, gross, the fat-ass tranny bitch is looking at me!”

 

The person shooting this verbal pistol is G, a small girl with a wreath of curly black hair, wearing a baseball jersey over a flowery mini-skirt. She's talking to her friend, F, a redheaded chinless boy with a blue cotton shirt over linen pants printed with sailboats. F shrugs, nods at what G just said. Allen gapes at them, then starts angling toward the other end of the hallway. G follows him, F in her wake. F is staring at him with eyes like endless void, and G is smirking. “Heyyyy you nasty whore, come back here!”  
  
_Tranny, TRANNY_ how the fuck did they know his real gender? He hasn't told anybody he's a boy yet except for B, he hasn't had a chance the figure out whether the Wammy's House orphans would accept him, and all evidence is pointing to _no,_ they will _not_ , and now the evidence is hard proof because G is scowling at him and F is leering at him making scraping noises in the back of his throat like he's about to spit and he _does_ , right in Allen's face. Slime dribbles from the side of his nose down his cheek and down his mouth and he shudders.

 

“What, you think my spit is too disgusting for you?” says F, his voice tundra cold. “If you were _really_ a man, you'd take it like a fucking man.” F shoves Allen into a nearby table, making his shirt ride up, and the table's edge dig into the flesh of his back. G grins hyenalike and tries to thrust her hands up his shirt, shrieking _let me see your titties, let me prove that you're a fucking girl!!_ Allen's pulse pounds, his hands shake, and he tries to push them off but they're like hawks trying to tear his flesh from his bones and suddenly someone else is there, to join them, help him, hurt him, he...

 

It's B. Loping over to them with the widest smile Allen has ever seen plastered to a human face.  
  
“What do you think you're doing?” he asks.

  
F is not intimidated, but G is. She steps back from Allen, shifts her eyes toward B and says, “we're not doing anything” but B isn't listening. He isn't asking anymore questions. Instead he's whipping our a pair of scissors, and before Allen can even process it those scissors are jammed straight into F's right hand. The hand that's still holding Allen's shirt. Its blue cloth gets splattered with blood. F pulls his hand away, hissing with pain. G screams, “you're a fucking psychopath!!”

 

 

“You're using that term incorrectly,” says B, pulling the scissors from F's hand. Blood gushes out, skin flaps to the side. Allen feels his guts twist, but it doesn't feel like they're part of his body. B scratches his chin. “Hmm...your eyes would be a lot prettier with a pair of scissors shoved into them. I could probably get both eyes if I opened the scissors, since yours are so close together. Thoughts?”   
  
“Fuck you!!” shrieks G, pushing F out of the room. “We're going to the nurse, and then we're reporting the shit out of you!!”

 

“Oh, I'm _soooo_ intimidated,” says B, rolling his eyes. “I'm sure that will go over fabulously for you. You'll have to admit to sexually harassing L's number one successor to do that.”  
  
G starts to object, but B grabs her face between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her lips to puff out fishlike and her eyes to bulge in their sockets. A's own cheeks sting in sympathy. “B wants you to listen very closely,” says B, lips curled into a grotesque grin. “No one here is allowed to bother A. Do you know _why_ he's called A? It's because he's _better than us. All of us_. You, _G and F,_ are no better than the gooey lint that builds up in his belly button. So act accordingly.”  
  
_“FINE!”_ shrieks G, voice exploding from her throat like a firecracker. She and F storm off to the nurse's office.  
  
B shoots A a bland smile. A forces his lips to reciprocate. “Thank you—”starts A, but suddenly B is so close that his forehead is blocking A's visions completely, and his nose is pressing into A's mouth. He can't speak.   
  
“Don't thank me,” growls B. “I didn't do it for you.”

 

~`~`~

  
  
Allen sits in his dorm room, legs folded up to his chest. He clutches a sheaf of papers, gnawing his bottom lip. Despite trying to will himself to leave his room three times today, he hasn't succeeded. He's been surviving off of granola bars, not going to meals because what if G and F show up, what if they've convinced the rest of Wammy's House to turn against him, what if they've told everyone he's trans, what if the entire orphanage gangs up on him, beats him, _kills him_ , ffffffuck he's stuck here fucking starving to death because he cannot leave this room. Maybe he can once B is released from the psych ward and can protect him like he said he would, but maybe not because B was probably the one who _told_ everyone, B was the only one who knew...

 

So there's no one he can trust, not really. And there is nowhere he can go besides this room. This means he hasn't been going to classes, hasn't been meeting with his adviser to discuss his most recent assigned case, hasn't done any of the actual research or interviewing or anything whatsoever that's required to figure out what happened. And of course the case is yet _another one_ about a black man being murdered by the police, apparently that's supposed to be his specialty because it happened to his father. What a great idea, rubbing his nose in the worst shit of his life every inescapable and terrible day of his miserable existence!!   
  
Allen curls into a ball on his bed, presses his cheek into his damp-from-tears pillow. Stares at the wood-paneled wall and tries to breathe past the weight in his chest until he can force himself to sit up.

  
~`~`~  
  
Beyond strides up to A's bedroom door, grinning like a salesman with an unbeatable pitch. “A?” he crows, pounding on the door. “A, I managed to record L using the bathroom!! This means that I have, in my hands, one of L's _most personal moments!_ It means that I have the opportunity to learn his mannerisms in this context! I had my guesses, but now I'll _know!_ Isn't that amazing?”

 

Beyond knows that A thinks nothing of the kind. A is a goalless, slow-moving idiot with no intention of truly taking on L's mantle. He knows that A won't worry that Beyond has surpassed him, even though he clearly has. Beyond isn't stupid and that isn't what he wants.

 

No, what he wants is for A to be disgusted, unnerved, and distracted from where Beyond just was for the last two weeks. The psychiatrist said he was _manipulative,_ as if that was a bad thing. So, manipulate he will. Beyond starts loudly describing the way L perched on the toilet, toes curling around the bowl. Beyond expects a reply. _“Gross_ ,” maybe, or “it's rude of you to record that.” But Beyond hears nothing.

He knocks on the door again. Usually, even if A didn't want to answer, Beyond would still be able to hear him breathing. But there's _nothing_ , just the ringing in his own ears, his own heart slapping against his rib cage. He types the code that he found in A's wallet into the keypad lock, then pushes the door open. He steps inside. The air is swampy, miasmatic. The room is dark. He thinks about leaving, coming back when A wakes up, but a sharp smell and a flash from the corner of his eye tell him that A won't be waking up any time soon.

 

He turns on the light.

 

The bedroom is empty. This being dormitory space, the only other room is the bathroom. Beyond tries the bathroom door and finds it unlocked. The bathroom light's been burning for a while.   
  
He furrows his brow at the shower rod, which has been pulled out of the wall, carrying wall debris with it. This happened because A tied a rope to it and leapt. A poorly thought-out suicide attempt. He should have tied the rope to something sturdier than a shower rod. He must have been truly distressed not to realize that. At least he thought to use strong rope, and tie it under the base of his neck. If he hadn't done that, he might have survived, probably with brain damage. A is definitely dead—the rotting stench makes that clear enough—but he checks his pulse just to be sure. Yup, dead.  
  
He should have been paying attention to the time. He'd mixed up the numbers floating above A's head with the numbers floating above someone else's. He'd thought he'd had a little more time.

 

When his stomach lurches and his heart slams his chest like a tantrumming child, he tells himself it's just the stink making him nauseous. When picturing the future without A makes his knees buckle and his throat hurt, he tells himself he can easily find a new rival, that he doesn't _need_ a rival and it's good that he came out on top. That he won't miss the specific person who embodied the concept of A at all.  
  
“What was this about, A?” he asks, squatting down to stare the corpse in its peeled-open eyes. “Too much stress? Was it G and F? They're nothing, they're horseflies, easily swatted away. You were much smarter than they were. They were worthless idiots who don't deserve to breathe the same air that you did, let alone the same air that _L_ does...they should have died. Not you.” Beyond sighs, pulls A's soon-to-be-stiff eyelid down to cover his eyes. “Thank you,” he says, voice brittle, throat aching with what he refuses to admit are unshed tears. “Now I don't have any real competition. Not that I needed your help to come out on top, but really. Thanks.”

  
~`~`~

 

Beyond doesn't know whether A would have wanted to be buried or cremated. He doesn't know what sort of funeral they ought to hold. He knows very little about either how Nigerians or Jamaicans deal with their dead. Though researching this would be easy, nothing he learned would tell him anything about how those traditions might have intersected with the fact that A was born in England, or that A is a specific person whose desires might have had nothing to do with his culture. A left no note, never spoke of what he wanted done with his body.

 

So when Roger calls him into his office to ask, B just shrugs. “Do whatever,” he says. “He's dead, so what he wants doesn't matter. Just do whatever will comfort the living.”

 

“Well, B,” says Roger, wringing his hands. "The living consists of all of us here, and his mother if we can convince her to attend. But more than that, the living is you. You were A's closest friend—”

 

“Isn't it about time we start calling him by his name?” interrupts Beyond, fiddling with a loose scrap of skin on his wrist. “After all, he can hardly compete for the title of L when he's dead. Isn't it about time we started calling me A instead?”

 

“Perhaps?” Roger purses his thin, dry lips. “In any case, you are the living.” His butterfly hands land softly on Beyond's shoulders. “What kind of service would help to ease the pain of losing your closest friend?”

 

“I don't know what makes you think we were so close,” snaps Beyond, jolting Rogers hands from his shoulders. “We were rivals. Why would I be anything but happy that he's gone?”

 

“If that was how you really felt, I doubt you would have defended him as many times as you did.” Roger's lips turn up at the corners, then immediately sag back down. “It's all right that you'd be having trouble processing your emotions right now,” he says, clearing his throat. “I understand. And if you don't have any input about the service, that's all right too. Watari and I will take care of it.”

 

“Do as you will,” says Beyond, voice flat and arms crossed and chin tucked into his neck. Hunched like L, because the only way to get through this shit is to keep practicing, keep aligning himself to his next step. He does not need Allen, does not want Allen, Allen was merely a distraction. Someone to play with in between those brief moments where L returned to the orphanage between cases, someone to draft into his schemes. Not a friend. Beyond had known he was going to die, and anyway you can't be friends with those that you want to defeat.   
  
He gets up from the oak wood chair where he'd been perched, his toes like talons and his arms like wings. “Allen is dead,” he says, lumbering toward the door. “I am A now.”  
  
~`~`~

 

At the funeral, Beyond stands over Allen's grave and weeps openly. He ends up on his knees almost choking with his sobs. Tears flow down his cheeks, snot bubbles on his upper lip, and he's drooling. No one speaks to him, just stares at him screaming and crying as the wind whips through his hair.   
  
L is there, hands folded and eyes shut. Purposefully ignoring Beyond as he tries to warp his mind toward mourning Allen. Beyond hollers so loudly he can't hear anything but his own voice reverberating in the echo chamber of his head.

 

When the brief service ends, he wipes the tears from his eyes and laughs as hard as he'd just cried. “I knew this would happen,” he gasps.

 


End file.
